But in segments that cater to businesses, there is still a strong hiring trend, according to data from a number of hiring companies.

Between November 2015 and April 2016, the number of joinees in e-commerce companies reduced by 61% compared to the six-month period prior to that, finds talent acquisition solutions company Belong.

The platform, which works with over 70 major companies including Snapdeal, Flipkart, Ola, Practo, Freshdesk, Razorpay, and Directi, tracks candidates' movements across different hiring stages for each company.

Recruitment assessment company Mettl has also noticed a similar trend for consumer focused firms. Mettl said a daily deals startup with monthly traffic of 1.8 million hasn't recruited for any role since January. Till then, the venture did between 100 and 900 candidate assessments per month.For B2B (business-to-business) ventures, it's different though. In the first half of 2015, the assessments done by 16 B2B companies remained under 350 per month, but it increased this year to reach 1,200 in February and was still high at 800 in June.

Aneesh Reddy of Bengaluru-based Capillary Technologies, a venture that provides cloud software solutions to other businesses, agrees with the B2B trend. Over the past six months, the company has recruited over 200 employees for its Bengaluru and Hyderabad offices.

"We are getting better talent now. People want to join stable companies," he said. Belong's data shows that the number of joinees in B2B companies increased by 32% during November 2015 to April 2016, compared to the six month period before that.

Sanjoe Thomas, founder of online video interview startup Talview, attributes the difference in trends between B2C and B2B partly to the fact that pure B2B companies do not have a labour-intensive model.